Recreation, Aggravation, Obsession

By Les Tanner

Not long ago, I was in the midst of one of my best pickleball games ever—my partner and I were up nine–zip, my lobs were working, I hadn’t hit a single ball out of bounds, and I’d just dropped a perfect dink over the net—when the phone rang.

In my haste to get to it, I knocked over the stack of books lying on the bedside table. This not only woke up my wife but it scared Jimmy the cat so much that he didn’t show up again until after breakfast. In spite of being informed by the caller that we’d won a weeklong cruise in the Caribbean, it was a bummer of a start for the day.

That incident has caused me to think that maybe pickleball—herein referred to as PB so I don’t have to continue to spell it—is more of an obsession than either a recreation or an aggravation.